Page 3189 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 October 2006
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funds as you see fit, provided you do it in accordance with best-practice financial management.”
We commend this amendment bill to the government. We seek the government’s support to vote with us in November so that the opposition and the government working together can quickly go to the nub of this problem and resolve it in weeks, not months—and certainly not in six months and certainly not through the unnecessary establishment of yet another committee or another inquiry. Get the matter resolved, minister. This is your opportunity to exercise leadership. Grab this by the short and curlies. Resolve the issue. Give your emergency volunteer units and brigades the confidence that they need to be able to raise their funds. Give the communities confidence so that they know that, when they raise funds for brigades/units, they will have confidence that those moneys are going to be spent for those express purposes.
This is your opportunity, minister, to do the right thing. Do not drag this mess on for another six months. Let us not see yet another typical Stanhope government dragging of the chain, too frightened to make decisions on issues that create unnecessary angst in the community or that impact on the morale of our front-line—
Mr Barr: This will be your approach to the education bill later in the day, then, will it, Mr Pratt?
MR PRATT: I know you do not care about that, Mr Barr. I know you do not particularly care that sound, sharp decisions are made in the best interests of the community, the schools or our volunteer agencies. But here is an opportunity now for the minister to support this legislation. We commend the amendment bill to the Assembly.
Debate (on motion by Mr Corbell) adjourned to the next sitting.
Land tax system
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (10.51): I move:
That this Assembly:
(1) notes:
(a) the acute shortage of rental accommodation in Canberra;
(b) the concurrently high levels of rent that Canberra tenants currently pay for rental accommodation;
(c) the relatively high levels of land tax that ACT property owners are subject to when compared with land tax rates in other Australian States and Territories; and
(d) the impact that high levels of land tax have on housing affordability in the ACT; and
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